Saturday, January 5, 2013

Christmas & Holiday Fun

Christmas and the whole month of December is one of my favorite times of the year. Even though we aren't Christian, we love to celebrate the family-themed festivities and the process of decorating the house and gift-giving.

This year was especially fun because it was Maya's first Christmas. She was the perfect age for it because she was pre-crawling...I had nightmares about her pulling down the ornaments! Luckily, she started crawling right after New Years, when we took the tree down.

My in-laws came to visit again, as well as my husband's cousin-brother from Seattle. We took advantage of our full house and did all the Christmas themed touristy stuff in Vancouver, such as the Stanley Park Christmas train and Bright Nights at Van Deusen Gardens.

There was a big snowstorm a few days before they arrived, and the snow was just melting when they came - so technically there was snow during their visit!

We also checked out the Luminescence show at the Vancouver Aquarium which was jellyfish themed (a favorite of mine to photograph). Maya was still a bit young for all of this - she fell asleep on the miniature train and at the aquarium! Out of all of them, she seemed to like the Bright Nights the best, because of all the lights.

The most fun part was having everyone together, my family and his family...and all the delicious family dinners.

For New Years Eve we went to my auntie's house for a dinner/party and Maya proceeded to have a huge tantrum!! Later I took her to the doctor and found out she had an ear infection, poor thing.

For the party, my mother-in-law wanted me to do her makeup which I was so excited about. She had not had her makeup done since her wedding day - 30+ years earlier!!!

I took her to Sephora earlier in the week and we got the correct foundation to match her skintone, which was Nars Sheer Glow Foundation in Tahoe - which is Medium/Dark with caramel undertones. It was a perfect foundation as it was light, but buildable coverage. I needed some help from the salesgirl to find the perfect match for her skin tone - she said Nars or Make Up Forever has the best shades for Indian skin. First, I used my Clinique moisturizer, and then Sephora makeup primer. Then I blended the Nars foundation all over her skin, and instead of using a concealer, I just used more foundation in certain spots. Then to set it, I used Laura Mercier colorless powder - not much. Then I used my Guerlain bronzer on the cheekbones. I used Nars blush on her cheeks which really perfected the whole look. I could have ended the look there, but since it was NYE I decided to glam it up a little. I used a MAC lip pencil to give her lips more definition and for her eyes I used a single sparkly brown shade from Urban Decay's Naked Palette. Then I used YSL mascara and lined the bottom of her eyelids with a plain black eyeliner. And viola! La make-over!

It's hard to believe that next Christmas she'll be 18 months old & walking! She will be helping us decorate!